Abstract:

Conceptual Art emerged as an international, avant-garde art movement in the mid-60s. Attacking the prevailing aesthetics of modern art, Conceptual artists claim that art lies not in the object itself but in the artist's idea or intention. Their asserted goals have been to combine theory with art and to eliminate the need for form in artworks. The purpose of this study was to examine and critique the key theoretical writings of three artists whose works have been recognized by the critics as significant and seminal for the Conceptual Art Movement: Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, and Terry Atkinson.Historical aspects relevant to this study included the following: (i) early twentieth-century antecedents of Conceptual Art; (ii) recent avant-garde movements of the 60s and 70s; (iii) the history and nature of the concept theories of Kosuth, LeWitt, and Atkinson; (ii) a critiqueof t ese theories in terms of their consistency and viabi ity for generating art; (iii) a comparison of Conceptual Art theories with both commonly accepted theories of art and more radical aesthetic theories of contemporary philosophers.Upon completion of this study, it was concluded that despite many ideological differences, Kosuth, LeWitt, and Atkinson agree on two key notions: (i) the locus of the "work of art" is not a physical object; and (ii) it is the artist's idea which alone accounts for the significance of an artwork. Their arguments in support of these notions are unsatisfactory. Longstanding issues in aesthetics, viz., the problems of defining art and evaluating its significance, are not resolved. The critics' acclaim of the writings critiqued in this study must therefore rest on extrinsic features such as the prestige of the artists, the relevance of the content of the writings to dominant trends in contemporary art, and the potential historical significance of their challenges to established views about art and aesthetics.